E3 '07: The Director, Phantom Hourglass and Zelda's Future

During a locked-doors meeting at E3 yesterday, legendary game designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Twilight Princess Director, Eiji Aonuma, sat down and discussed the Legend of Zelda franchise’s present, past, and future.

The meeting was scheduled to be a Super Mario Galaxy discussion, but Mr. Aonuma jumped in to reveal information regarding The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and suprised the crowd regarding the next Wii iteration for the franchise.

Aonuma explained how Phantom Hourglass has opened up the series and has given a fresh, new control scheme to the aging Zelda formula. He also said while The Wind Waker’s disappointing sales affected him personally, he still wanted to keep the style rolling in another Zelda release, hence the inspiration for PH.

Japan has taken the game by storm and it is on its way to becoming one of the most highly sold handheld games ever, (mainly in thanks to a Famitsu score of 39 out of a possible 40). Aonuma said that PH opened up casual gamers to the Zelda series for the first time, as controlling Link and solving puzzles is much more attractive with the DS touch screen controls.

Once the Zelda director seemed to be wrapping up his Zelda discussion, he changed gears entirely and started talking about plans for the upcoming Wii Zelda, shocking the audience.

He had almost a kid-like excitement with the way he talked about the title, and wanted to release as much information as possible, but couldn’t because Miyamoto demanded him to not to reveal to much information.

He said that he wants a whole different base of control to take form for the next addition to the series — to open up the main Zelda adventures on Wii for the casual gaming crowd as has Phantom Hourglass done with the DS. When asked about one-to-one swordplay and full Wiimote control, he said he was dying to flesh out all the ideas but says its still pretty open.

In regards to the game’s storyline, Aonuma didn’t release too much information, so the story of the game is still out there. But he did say that he wants to offer something in the next Zelda that all gamers will like — both casual and hardcore.

In my opinion, I think it would be great to use all of the features of the Wii controllers in addition to a new full motion capture system to control Link.

Imagine controlling Link with the Balance Board and have him replicate your movements. I’m pretty sure that would get the attention of millions of casual players, and if the same classic Zelda formula were in place, hardcore fans should be drooling over it.

We will have more info on this game as developments unfold, but with such scant information given, you really have to wonder just what the possibilities for a full blown Zelda game can be.